Chiaroscuro
by Kilerkki
Summary: Light and darkness, crack and angst. A collection of drabbles focusing on the minor characters of the Naruto universe. [Ch. 19: Kankurou meets the Inuzuka. They're suitably grateful, and he's suitably impressed.]
1. Family Traditions

**Author's Note:** I realized the other day that while I haven't written anything major in a while, I do have a lot of little drabbles and one-shots floating around my livejournal. Quite a few of these are based on original characters, but many of them are in keeping with my Feverishly Fleshing-out Minor Characters theme, and so I've decided to post them here, for the delight (or horror) of you all.

These drabbles with range in length and character-choice as much as they do in mood and content. One may be entirely cheerful crack; the next may be as sober and angsty as I ever get. I'll try to post summaries and warnings before each story, so you know what you're getting into. That said, let's get on with the show!

* * *

**Title: **Family Traditions  
**Rating: **G  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **767  
**Warning/s: **No spoilers at all, but there's a bit of subtext from my previous Genma and Hana stories.  
**Summary: **Kiba had to learn to swim somewhere…

**Notes:** Inspired by iamzuul, who answered my plea for something to write with a cry of "MORE CRACK!" and by link no miko, who more specifically asked for "younger!hana and young!kiba going swimming in a river and teaching him how to dive!"

Of course, before you learn how to dive you've got to learn how to swim.

(To those who may wonder: This is not quite the way I learned how to swim, but the sibling interaction is true to life. Fear the four-year-olds.)

-

"It's _wet,_" Kiba says, with the irrefutable logic of a four-year-old. "Mum says if I come home wet anymore she'll tie me to Kuromaru. No more river." He crosses his arms over his chest and juts his chin out like a miniature replica of the Hokage Mountain carved in flesh.

"She only said that 'cause every time you go near the river you fall in and one of us has to drag you out," Hana retorts in growing exasperation. "Either you never _ever _come here again, or you learn to swim, okay? We're sick of watching you try to drown yourself on your own."

"Wasn't trying to drown," Kiba mutters sulkily. "Was gonna catch a fish n' _eat _it. Anyway," he adds, "I don't wanna swim."

"You don't want to drown, either, do you?" Hana demands. She crosses her arms as well and glares at her little brother. A trickle of sweat slides down her cheek, dampening limp strands of hair to her face. It's too hot to argue, certainly too hot to deal with a little brother who has decided that the Terrible Twos can last three years and counting. She asked Genma once if she was ever this bad, and he just laughed and showed her the white scars on his thumb—faded but still visible even after nearly ten years—that serve as a memento of their first meeting.

According to Genma, Hana was a brat and she's never grown out of it.

Hana doesn't find that reassuring.

She has, however, learned some useful things from her adopted aniki, and one of them is a strategy so rarely employed in their family that it might be enough of a novelty to shock Kiba into obeying. So instead of yelling and ordering him into the water, or threatening not to let him eat anything but vegetables for a week, or just picking him up and throwing him in, Hana tries reasoning with him. "It's not that deep here, see?" she says reassuringly, jumping in with a splash. The brown water eddies around her hips, and she splashes some up at Kiba on the bank. He jumps back with a yelp, and she sighs and plants her hands on her hips.

"Look, I know you're not scared of water. You can just pretend this is your bath, can't you?

"_No _bath!" Kiba yells. He grabs a stone off the bank and throws it at her, and for a four-year-old he has astonishingly good aim and a very strong arm. Hana ducks underwater as the stone whizzes over her head, and by the time she reemerges, sputtering and dashing water out of her eyes, Kiba's already taken off up the hillside. Hana's dogs stand in a bewildered and dampened grey cluster on the bank, waiting for her orders.

Hana sighs. "Go get 'im," she says.

Howling with glee, the dogs take off. Kiba shrieks and speeds up, chubby arms pumping the air for all he's worth, but while the dogs are barely five years old, still puppies by Inuzuka standards, they're fast. And while one of them jumping on a man's back probably wouldn't make much more of an impression than a (clawed and fanged and snarling) pillow thrown at his head, three of them piling on top of a four-year-old make quite a bit of an impression. Kiba goes down to the accompaniment of the dogs' joyful yelps and his own screams.

Hana pushes herself up the bank and jogs dripping up the hill to pull the puppies off. Kiba's scratched up a bit, but that's nothing new; in the Inuzuka clan scratches and bites are as common as stubbed toes are to any other family. At least he's not crying, although he is muttering vindictively under his breath and wiping dog-slobber off his face as he glares at Amaya, who just smirks back.

"No swimming," he says stubbornly. "I wanna go home. I'll tell Mum on you!"

"Mum's the one who made me bring you out here," Hana snaps, tugging him to his feet. "You think I'm doing this 'cause I want to?"

"No," Kiba grumbles. "It's 'cause you're mean." He kicks her in the shin, and those little sandaled feet pack a lot of punch. "I hate you!" he yells, trying to twist away from her hands on his shoulders. "Lemme go!"

"Fine, you little rat," Hana snarls at him, picks him up under the arms, and throws him in the river.

After all, it's the way their father taught _her _to swim. And the Inuzuka have always been firm believers in family traditions.


	2. Strength

**Title: **Strength  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **394  
**Warning/s: **Implications of sex and assassination.  
**Summary: **The kunoichi of Konoha may lack a shinobi's muscles, but there's more than one kind of strength in the world.  
**Notes:** Um. I don't know where this came from. Actually I do--I was walking home late at night, in the dark, on my own, listening to "Blow Winds," and suddenly I started thinking about a Kurenai fic written by a friend of mine. And about the type of missions that kunoichi have to take. And then I thought that probably Sakura wouldn't have to do that type of missions--she's too valuable as a medic-nin--but that the other girls her age wouldn't have that protection. And a scene came into my head of a confrontation between Sakura and Ino, and of Ino not telling Sakura because she still wants to protect her. That scene never made it into the finished drabble, but...yeah.

So. A kind of scary little drabble, written because very few people seem to respect a kunoichi's true strength.

* * *

Ino receives her first solo mission the day after her fifteenth birthday, and she's so scared she's not sure whether to scream or cry. She's not ready for this, she tells herself, but she knows she is, knows they wouldn't have given her this mission if she wasn't ready, knows this is what she's spent the past ten years working for. She wanted to be the best kunoichi Konoha had to offer, and the very fact that they've given her this mission proves that in this, at least, she is.

She still wants to crawl into her father's lap and wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face in his chest and sob herself to sleep knowing he'll make everything better.

But her father can't know about this mission. No one can, not even the boys she's grown up with and played with and fought with and trained with until they worked together better than any genin team in Konoha. She suspects—she hopes—even Shikamaru would try to stop her.

But this is what it means to be a kunoichi. You bear the pain in silence, and when Asuma-sensei invites the three of them out to barbeque tonight for old times' sake, and Shikamaru shrugs and sighs and says he'll be there, and Chouji grins and pumps his fist in the air and cheers like he's just won the lottery, Ino smiles and tosses her hair and says sorry, she has a date tonight, maybe next week, okay?

And when her thighs and her hands are sticky with blood, and only some of it's her own, she closes her eyes and sits on the edge of the bed and refuses to let herself cry.

After a little while she gets up and washes the blood away with water from the bathroom sink, and she wraps her ripped kimono around her bruised body, and then she works methodically around the body in the bed, removing all traces of her presence. She leaves by the window, and she turns in her mission report before dawn.

When she sees Shikamaru on the street the next day, she has to remind herself to smile.

And when he asks her about her date, she reminds herself to lie.

She's a kunoichi of Konoha, after all. And there's more than one type of strength in the world.


	3. The Unreachable Star

**Title: **The Unreachable Star  
**Rating: **G  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **251  
**Warning/s: **None, unless you have no idea who Naruto is.  
**Summary: **Everyone has an unreachable star. Naruto just has a longer reach.  
**Notes:** This drabble is, of course, based on a verse from the musical "Don Quixote." I had no idea where I was going when I started it, but I rather liked how it turned out all the same. The epigram still fits, at any rate.

* * *

_And the world will be better for this_

_That one man, scorned and covered with scars_

_Still strove with his last ounce of courage_

_To reach the unreachable star_

-

He doesn't wear his scars for the world to see. The Kyuubi takes care of that. Life-threatening wounds, like the loss of half a lung from a chakra-charged hand shoved through his chest, heal almost at once; smaller wounds, like a kunai plunged into the back of his hand, take a little longer, but before he wakes the next morning they've always vanished, leaving his skin as smooth and clear as a frog's silken throat. He keeps the calluses he's earned, and the muscles he's built, and the reflexes he's trained, but you'd never tell it from a glance at his unmarred, golden skin. He doesn't _look _like a ninja, scarred and battle-weary and broken in body and spirit.

He looks like a demon.

The six slashes across his cheeks are the only scars he'll ever bear, and by now he's realized that they're not so much scars as markings, like the black rings around Gaara's eyes that recall his tanuki resident. Still, they serve to remind the villages of What He Is, and they serve to remind _him _of Who He Is.

To the village, he's Kyuubi no Kitsune, the demon fox that nearly destroyed them all.

To himself, he's Uzumaki Naruto, the legacy Yondaime left to become a hero and a weapon to protect the village he loved. He's the vessel for the only power strong enough to protect the village _he _loves, and he's the future Hokage of Konoha.

He hopes the Yondaime would be proud of him.


	4. Teamwork

**Title: **Teamwork  
**Rating: **G  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **708  
**Warning/s: **Spoilers for Kakashi Gaiden, perhaps. And little boys in briefs.  
**Summary: **Kakashi and Obito get along as well as fire and water, but the future Yondaime Hokage is a man with a plan. And like all the Yellow Flash's plans, whether it succeeds or fails, it's going to do it on a spectacular scale.  
**Notes:** Inspired by a challenge from bitethehandthatfeeds, who is the supplier of crack to the world. I quite like it, actually.

* * *

"He started it!" Obito yelled, throwing a punch that would _so_ have knocked Kakashi's stupid dandelion-fluff head right off his shoulders if the jerk hadn't dodged. And then stuck out his foot and tripped Obito right on his face. Obito lunged up spitting grass and mud and curses—or would have, if Sensei's sandal hadn't descended on his back before Obito was more than two feet off the ground. He went flat again with a betrayed wail.

Kakashi sniffed and turned away. Then stopped, because Sensei's hand was pinning his shoulder and the Yellow Flash wasn't a jounin for nothing. "Think you're getting off the hook?" their sensei asked sweetly. "What did I tell you about fighting each other?"

They stayed obstinately silent. The Yellow Flash's large hand tightened on Kakashi's shoulder, and he leaned a little more weight onto Obito's back. "Huh?"

"Don't," Kakashi muttered at last, because Obito's mouth was too full of mud for him to speak.

"Exactly," the jounin said with satisfaction. He stepped back, hands on his hips. "So what are you going to do about it?"

"Glips foij nead ov," Obito muttered, prying his face out of the mud with a sucking gloop and a great deal of spitting.

"Oh, _really_," Sensei said even more sweetly, and Obito knew he'd made a mistake.

That was the last thing he knew before something jabbed into his arm and darkness covered his eyes.

But appropriately enough, the last thing he heard was Kakashi cursing.

-

He woke up cold. And wet. And slimy. Cold and wet he could understand, 'cause it had been raining when he'd first started quarrelling with Kakashi over who had to set up their tent, but slimy—?

And stripped down to his Uchiha-fan-printed _briefs_?

And handcuffed to _Kakashi_?

He tried to surge to his feet. The handcuff pretty effectively prevented that, because his left wrist was chained to Kakashi's right, and even if Kakashi was far too thin to be healthy (Obito could count his _ribs_, and he really did _not_ need to know that Kakashi wore camouflage briefs!) he was still almost as heavy as Obito was.

The mud didn't help, either. Obito's feet slid out from under him, and he fell with a painful thump in _really cold and slimy_ mud.

"Idiot," Kakashi muttered without opening his eyes. "What are you trying to do?"

"Get away from _you_, you creep!" Obito yelled. "This is all _your_ fault!"

"You're the one who had to have the last word," Kakashi pointed out, opening his eyes at last to direct a dark glare at his teammate. "If you'd just kept your fool mouth shut sensei wouldn't have done anything."

"If you weren't such a jerk I wouldn't have said anything!" Obito tried to climb to his feet again, and once again slipped and fell flat on his butt. He glared back at Kakashi. "Are you just gonna lie there all night?"

"Are you gonna spend the rest of your life as a hyperactive idiot?" Kakashi retorted, but he did sit up and pull Obito's arm sharply to the side as he inspected the handcuffs. Obito held his tongue for once, because no matter what anyone said about Kakashi, it was true that he was a genius, and he'd get them out of these handcuffs if anyone could.

Unfortunately, their sensei was also a genius. And he knew them rather too well. Kakashi let their wrists splash back into the mud and scowled down at them. "He's done something to it. I can't get it off."

His lower lip pushed out in what was almost a pout. Obito gaped.

"You're not wearing your mask!"

"Idiot," Kakashi growled. "You think sensei'd take my pants and leave my mask?"

Obito didn't care about that, and said so. "Point is, I can get you back now—"

And he launched himself at his teammate.

When the Yellow Flash returned ten minutes later to see if his recalcitrant boys had finally learned their lesson, he found Obito sprawled panting in the mud with a magnificent black eye and a broken wrist and a set of beautiful bruises blooming over his pale body.

Kakashi was doing his best to clean the mud out of his mouth.


	5. Sake and Shinobi

**Title: **Sake and Shinobi  
**Rating: **PG  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **581  
**Warning/s: **Contains a drunk!Yondaime (someday, I promise, I will write him serious…and sober)  
**Summary: **The Yellow Flash is Konoha's best ninja—and he's not ashamed to say so.  
**Notes:** A birthday present for bitethehandthatfeeds here on ff dot net; she asked for the story behind one of my favorite livejournal icons, which is quoted in Yondaime's last words in this story. She also asked for cameos from Jiraiya, Sandaime, and the kids. The hat is just an extra bonus!

* * *

"Six!" he crowed, slamming the cup down on the desk so hard that bottles jumped. "You're going _down_, old man--old men." He blinked fuzzily. "Hokage-sama. You wanna play too?" 

Sarutobi laughed and settled down into the only remaining chair, beside Jiraiya-sensei, who was--as usual--grumbling and scribbling something in a notebook. "I doubt I could beat you even with a head-start; your boy's remarkably inventive, Jiraiya. Who else could think of three different ways to kill someone with a wooden sandal?"

"It was supposed to be four," Jiraiya said a little snippily.

"'Cause I'm the fourth, y'see," his student explained. "But I've only messed up six times so far; Jiraiya-sensei's up to nine--" He cut off with a hiccup and sat back, looking rather surprised at himself. The large red-and-white hat slipped crookedly to the side of his head; he looked up in bemusement and it made a hasty dive for his nose.

Chuckling, Sarutobi reached out to avail himself of one of the numerous bottles littering the desk. "Looks like that hat's a little small. We may have to have a new one made for you, Yondaime-sama."

"His head's too big," Jiraiya observed clinically. "All right, kid, a card-board box."

"Use blood to write the kanji for explosions," the new Yondaime said promptly. "Rip an edge off, throw it like a shuriken towards eyes or throat--Hey! My head is _not_ too big!"

"You need a haircut," Jiraiya said bluntly. "And that's only two. Take a drink." He poured a new cup and pushed it across the desk.

"That's an interesting variation on the game," Sarutobi remarked, watching the young Fourth Hokage down his penalty with a disgruntled grumble. "I might have expected it from you."

"Orochimaru and I used to play it," Jiraiya answered, keeping one eye on the young man who was currently trying to rescue a hat that seemed determined to escape from his head. "The kid's pretty good at it, too, 'xcept he holds his sake even worse than Oro--"

"Sensei!" a young voice snapped accusingly from the door. All three men looked round quickly, guiltily. But it was the new Yondaime Hokage whose eyes brightened first.

"Rin-chan! Kakashi-kun! C'mon in--" He waved vaguely around the room. "'F you don' mind, Hokage-sama?"

"It's your office now," Sarutobi said mildly. "Hello, Rin-san, Kakashi-kun. You've come to congratulate your sensei?"

"We've come to stop him from making a fool of himself," Kakashi growled.

Rin kicked his ankle. "We know Sensei has a meeting with the Daimyo tomorrow morning, and we wanted to make sure--we know he doesn't, ah, deal with alcohol very well..."

"I'm watching out for him!" Jiraiya said indignantly.

"That's why we worried," Kakashi muttered.

"Hey!" their sensei protested, blinking at them with wounded blue eyes. He clambered unsteadily to his feet, hat askew, lithe body a little awkward with sake and his unfamiliar new robes. "I'll be _fine_. I am the Yondaime Hokage--"

"Sensei, watch out!" Rin cried out. Too late. Kakashi was already moving, dropping down to the floor to support himself with his hands as he swept his leg out to take out his sensei's legs in a move he must have learned from Gai.

None of them even saw the drunk young Hokage move. One moment he was standing there blinking owlishly at his students, and the next he was hanging upside down from the ceiling, arms folded, grinning at them all.

"Worship me, mortals!"

* * *

**A final note: **a reviewer recently brought to my attention the lamentable fact that I have not defined _chiaroscuro_, although it's the title of this entire series. The term comes from a painting technique in the Italian Renaissance which focused on the use of light and shade in paintings and drawings, and its effect. Thus the summary: "Light and darkness, crack and angst." Something of everything…and perhaps, added together, they make a little bit more. 

Thank you very much, everyone, for your reviews. If there's a particular pairing or situation you'd like to see from me, feel free to place a request _along with _a review! I make no promises, but I do write on commission…


	6. Before I Wake

**Title: **Before I Wake  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **444  
**Warning/s: **Contains implications of murder.  
**Summary: **As an operative for Konoha's ANBU, young Yuuhi Kurenai lives in the darkness of the life behind the mask.  
**Notes:** I thought I got this out of my system with _Sanglant. _Apparently not. Applying to play Kurenai at an ANBU RPG, I was struck by an unusual sample RP prompt…and the line from this poem. In an attempt to exorcise both, I wove them together. Now that I'm finished I recognize that the epigram really works better with _Sanglant, _but oh well.

The title is another allusion, to the familiar child's prayer: "Now I lay me down to sleep / I pray the Lord my soul to keep / If I should die before I wake / I pray the Lord my soul to take."

* * *

_Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so?_

Matthew Arnold, "The Scholar-Gypsy"

-

The moonlight slipped through the slats of the shuttered window, puddled across the floor, and climbed the side of the bed just far enough to gild the tousled hair and limn the curve of a chubby fist tucked under a rounded chin. It was not so very late—the moon had just climbed above the imprisoning branches of the garden trees, and muffled voices still chimed together in laughter somewhere in the manor's vast halls, and in a little while perhaps the child's nurse would come sleepily to look in on him before she stumbled to her own bed—but already the boy was deeply asleep, round face slack, shadowed eyelids flickering in dreams. A tiny smile still clung to the corners of his lips.

He was, Kurenai tried very hard _not _to think, about the same age her little sister had been when one of the Kyuubi's burning tails had swept the Yuuhi house into flames and fallen timbers. Three years old, still round with the remnants of baby-fat, but still so small; she could have held him easily in her arms. Perhaps, in another life, she might have. In another life she might have married at sixteen, like plump and happy Keiko-chan, the daughter of the dango-maker down the street from Kurenai's apartment; she might already have one child tugging at her hem and another nuzzling at her breast. She might have borne this child, nursed him, rocked him, praised his first tremulous steps and kissed away the tears when he fell…

In another life, she might have been merely an ordinary kunoichi, a smiling and enthusiastic girl who never thought of any mission darker than guarding a worried merchant or stealing a treasured scroll. She might have turned down the missions another young kunoichi would have to take; she might have closed her eyes and gone on laughing, teasing, retiring perhaps at nineteen or twenty to marry her Academy sweetheart and raise a new generation of bright-eyed little idealists.

In another life, she might not have joined the ANBU. She might not have taken a mission Kakashi or anyone at all really might have completed much better, simply because they were away and she was there when the mission crossed the Hokage's desk. She might even have crept into the room and looked down into the boy's sleeping, smiling face, and said the hell with a man who could order a political enemy's tiny son murdered as a warning to the boy's father, and crept away again.

In another life, she might have wondered if donning a mask meant shedding your soul.

But in this life, she knew it was true.


	7. Unattractive and Deadly

**Title: **Unattractive—And Deadly  
**Rating: **PG  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **405  
**Warning/s: **Contains dangerous and inappropriate uses of bubblegum  
**Summary: **Orochimaru may be the genius of the teenage Sannin team, and Tsunade the power-house, but Jiraiya's got a few ideas of his own.  
**Notes:** This is another request fic; actually it's something of a trade. I bribed an amazing artist friend into drawing a picture of ANBU!Kurenai for me by promising her a fic of her choice; she asked for young punk!Jiraiya and "bubblegum." Fear the crack.

(My mother always told me that chewing gum was unattractive, but she neglected to mention that it can be deadly.)

* * *

"That's a really nasty habit," Tsunade says, glaring. "You look like a cow. Seriously. Do you _have_ to chew with your mouth open?"

"It's _bubblegum,_" Jiraiya explains with all the patience in the world. Okay, not all of it, as Orochimaru seems to be hoarding whatever he can over in the corner. At least, that's the only explanation Jiraiya can come up with for why Orochimaru hasn't yet snapped and flung a few dozen kunai in his general direction.

He pops his gum again, just to be obnoxious. Orochimaru twitches.

"You," Tsunade says slowly, "have the next two seconds to spit that out and remember that you're a jounin of Konoha and we're on a secret mission and you're supposed to be _quiet_ before I come over there and--"

"Quiet," Orochimaru hisses. "They're coming."

Tsunade shuts up immediately and hunkers down in her corner of the tiny, abandoned shack, clenching her fists and mouthing something deadly at Jiraiya. He smirks back and turns his attention to the knot-hole through which he can just see the street outside. The squad of Iwa-nin is just coming into view, four men with faces creased from scowling (Tsunade'll get like that someday if she doesn't lighten up; he'll have to remind her of this when they're out of here) and hitai'ate glinting from forehead and belt and shoulder. Their footsteps drum the ground. Orochimaru can probably catch the cadence and predict exactly where the third one in line will be fourteen and a half steps from now, but Jiraiya just has to guess.

He spits his gum through the knot-hole.

It's a decent guess; it lands just short of the second ninja's sandal, and although the third ninja's first step forward doesn't catch it, his second does. He makes a disgusted noise and stops to inspect the sticky pink junk gluing his sandal to the dusty ground; his comrades mill around him with exclamations of boredom and irritation and surprise. "Still sticky!" the third one says angrily, pulling his fingers away from his sandal; pink strings stretch with them. He looks up furiously, straight at the shack.

Jiraiya grins through his knot-hole, and forms the final seal that will ignite the thoroughly-broken-down compounds in the bubblegum.

By the time the crater in the street stops smoking, he and Orochimaru and Tsunade are long gone.

And Tsunade is demanding where on earth he got that gum, and when can she get some?


	8. Lost Generation

**Title: **Lost Generation  
**Rating: **PG  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **247  
**Warning/s: **Kakashi Gaiden spoilers?  
**Summary: **The war took their friends, their families, and their innocence. They never were children, but they've always been shinobi.  
**Notes: **The summary line came first, then the first line, then the last. The middle sort of filled in by itself. I've always been fascinated by the Gaiden—in fact, I'm listening to sna's wonderful Kakashi Gaiden soundtrack right now!—and the dynamic between all the members of Team Yellow Flash. This is, I suppose, a bit more angsty than my previous drabbles, but not quite so much as _Breaking My Heart._

_

* * *

_

_ -_

The war took their friends, their families, and their innocence. They never were children, but they've always been shinobi._  
_

_- _

Hatake Kakashi lost his left eye when he was twelve years old, and Uchiha Obito was thirteen when he lost his life.

But by that point age didn't really matter. Kakashi had been a man at seven, when he'd slid his first kunai into a beating heart and felt his fingers grow hot and slick with blood, felt the heart-beat stutter and die. He'd been a shinobi long before that, so long ago that he thinks maybe he always was. Maybe he was born with a kunai in his hand and the One Hundred Shinobi Rules tripping off his tongue, and maybe that's why his father killed himself, because he'd failed to end the war that made sure Kakashi would never be a child.

Obito came a little more slowly, but then he'd always been a little slower, a little clumsier, a little weaker. Except when it mattered, which is why Kakashi sometimes wonders if Obito really did manage to break a barrier Kakashi never could. He awakened the Sharingan (_a little late_) and then he died, and he died saving his friends and giving away the prize he'd won and the girl he'd loved and the life he deserved to live.

Maybe the shinobi concept of _becoming a man _is a little skewed. Maybe the first time you slit someone's throat isn't such a rite of passage. Maybe most of the people Kakashi knows have never really grown up.

But then, they never were children either.

And for this generation, it's always been too late, and all that's left for them to be is ninja.


	9. Itch

**Title: **Itch  
**Rating: **G  
**Pairing: **Lee/Sakura  
**Word Count: **194  
**Warning/s: **It's, um, Lee/Sakura:ducks:  
**Summary: **Sakura likes analogies.  
**Notes:** Another request fic; the lovely link no miko asked for Lee/Sakura with the keyword "itch." I was happy to oblige!

I actually really like this pairing, although sadly I think it's extremely unlikely. Sakura doesn't know what's good for her, poor girl. (Although I am tempted to wonder how she got so strong while Naruto was away; maybe Tsunade wasn't the only one she was training with...)

* * *

-

On one of Team 7's first training missions, Sakura stumbled into a patch of poison ivy and spent the next week scratching her legs raw and slathering them with lotion and chucking explosion tags at any plant that looked even remotely menacing. Somewhere along the way, she finds herself remembering that time, remembering the maddening pain and the way she _couldn't_ stop scratching and the way she was so terrified Sasuke would find her red legs disgusting.

Sasuke, she decides, is like poison ivy. Lush and green and beautiful to begin with, but after you touch it its poison seeps into you and drives you mad.

Naruto is the itch. Annoying and obnoxious and irritating as hell, but as long as the itch is there you know your skin's trying to heal yourself; sure it hurts, but you know it's going to get better.

And maybe Lee is green, and maybe he's annoying, but still Sakura can't compare him to anything but the lotion that cooled the burning pain and eased the raw red sores and finally let her sleep at night.

So when Lee holds her, she can let herself relax at last.


	10. Fork

**Title: **Fork  
**Rating: **G  
**Pairing: **Kakashi/Rin  
**Word Count: **100 (it's a real drabble, yay!)  
**Warning/s: **None  
**Summary: **For someone used to chopsticks, a fork is a strange utensil  
**Notes:** Inspired by Asuka, who asked for Kakashi/Rin with the keyword "fork." Fluff abounds! (Yes, it's short...go read _Masks and Shadows _to make up for it!)

* * *

"And they really eat with this?" Kakashi turned the fork over slowly, glaring at the glittering tines and curved back. "That's..."

"It's no more barbaric than eating meat with your kunai on missions," Rin sighed, reaching across the table to rearrange the fork in Kakashi's hand. "Look, you hold it like this, see--"

"I wasn't gonna say barbaric," Kakashi interrupted. She looked up at him in surprise, and his eye crinkled in a smile. "I was gonna say, efficient. In more ways than one."

Somehow, without her realizing it, his fingers had twisted around to hold her hand instead.


	11. Food of the Gods

**Title: **Food of the Gods  
**Rating: **PG  
**Pairing: **Chouji/Ino  
**Word Count: **269  
**Warning/s: **None  
**Summary: **Chouji's cooking is more than just lunch—it's a labor of love.  
**Notes:** Inspired by the lovely iamzuul, who asked for Chouji/Ino with the keyword "salad." I couldn't pass this up. Chouji is love!

* * *

"So," Chouji says, a little nervously. They've eaten lunch today a thousand times, but this time is different; somehow all the other lunches seem only to be practices for this one, the real one.

...And, of course, the thousands of lunches that will come after this...

He breaks into a wide grin at the thought. "What would you like?"

Ino shrugs and pauses polishing her kunai long enough to reach out and twitch a spray of flowers--Sakura's gift, Chouji remembers--back into place in its simple and elegant errangement. "I'm not really hungry. A salad would be fine."

A salad? He stares at her for a moment in undisguised horror. A salad? On this, the first day of their new life together, the best day of his life so far, a day marred only by the fact that they have a mission in a few hours--but even that's not so much of a problem, because they'll see Shikamaru!--she wants a salad?

She glances up at him. "Is there a problem, love? I could make it--"

"No, no, you stay there!" Chouji pushes her back onto the couch and whirls into the kitchen. All right, he can make a salad. But, he decides, it's not just going to be any ordinary salad. She's going to see exactly what the man she married is capable of!

Two hours later, when Shikamaru slouches up the stairs to their new apartment and lets himself in without bothering to knock, he finds only the remnants of lunch on the table and a trail of salad leaves leading to the bedroom.


	12. Faith of Our Fathers

**Title: **Faith of our Fathers  
**Rating: **PG  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **326  
**Warning/s: **None  
**Summary: **Orochimaru's mother raised him for survival, not for loyalty.  
**Notes:** At the Shades of War RPG, our lovely Asuka plays Nao, Orochimaru's mother. Orochimaru is three years old in the current timeline, but Asuka asked for Nao and Orochimaru and the keyword "blood," and I couldn't pass it up.

* * *

He has his father's eyes from the start: yellow-green, slit-pupiled, cool and calm and far too knowing for a child only a few hours old. Nao cradles the tiny body to her breast and stares down at him and sees Hebimaru's eyes gazing back up at her from that chubby little face, and she wonders why, exactly, the knot behind her breastbone seems to clench even tighter whenever she looks at her son.

His father is two months dead, after all, and in this birth she's lost more blood than Hebimaru spilt. It was a hard birth and if Kaiyo-sensei wasn't there, Nao probably wouldn't have survived. Konoha might have seen it as a tragedy--_husband killed by Stone ANBU two months ago, wife dies in childbirth and the baby's left orphaned and alone--_ but Nao is old enough and cynical enough to appreciate the irony.

And maybe, just maybe, to wish that she didn't have to live everybody else's happy ending. She still wonders sometimes, as she strokes her pale fingers through Orochimaru's fine hair while he sleeps against her chest, if Hebimaru will forgive her. If, dead and omniscient, he'll at last know the truth that killed him.

But she isn't exactly anxious to explain it to him, not just yet. She's got Orochimaru, after all, and for the first time in her life she's not just following the path someone else has laid out for her. Orochimaru never figured into her father's plans; Hebimaru's plans were ripped to pieces with the first spurt of blood that stained the stairs.

He trusted her too much. And it killed him.

And so Nao cups her hand around the back of Orochimaru's tiny head, and stares down into her husband's/her son's yellow-green eyes, and vows that she'll never let Orochimaru make the same mistake.

These Konoha nin are all too trusting. Perhaps Orochimaru will never fully be a Konoha nin. But at least he'll be alive.


	13. Pokerface

**Title: **Pokerface  
**Rating: **PG  
**Pairing: **Jiraiya/Tsunade  
**Word Count:** 153  
**Warning/s: **Remember when Jiraiya told Naruto about the three great pitfalls for a shinobi? Well, they're all in action here.  
**Summary: **Tsunade can't resist a game of chance. Jiraiya can't resist…other things.  
**Notes:** Casey asked for Jiraiya/Tsunade, "poker"; I was surprised with how much I enjoyed writing this!

* * *

"Royal flush," he says, and lays his hand face-down, grinning that goofy wide grin that a lifetime of slaps have never been able to wipe off his face. "Looks like the pot's mine, Tsunade-hime."

"In your dreams, pervert," she snaps, snatching his cards up to examine them. She's never known him to cheat, but she hates giving up without a fight, and what can you expect of a self-proclaimed Super-Pervert anyway?

Of course he's right; his hand annihilates hers without half trying. She tosses hers down in disgust and pulls off her green coat as well. "I don't know why I ever let you talk me into this…"

"Because you can never resist a challenge," he says calmly. "And admit it. You liked the idea of winning."

Her snarl doesn't quite drown out the crash when the sake bottle meets the side of his head, and neither of them drown out his laughter.


	14. Mail Call

**Title: **Mail Call  
**Rating: **K  
**Pairing: **None  
**Word Count: **536  
**Warning/s: **Spoilers for the Retrieving Gaara!arc of the manga  
**Summary: **It's an ordinary morning in the Kazekage's palace--until Gaara brings in the mail.  
**Notes: **I'm beginning to believe our bathroom is a dangerous place. Why is it that more story ideas strike when I'm brushing my teeth or washing my hair than at any other time? And why do these particular plotbunnies attach themselves to my ankles and beg me to write sandsib!crack!fic? This one...takes place sometime after Gaara returns. Doesn't particularly matter when. It's also OOC like whoa but I had fun writing it. And this is for kimi no vanilla even though Kakashi!angst makes her happier, because the Kankurou-on-a-mission!fic is ever so slow, and she's the first person to make me like Kankurou.

-

* * *

Gaara wandered into the kitchen wearing a peculiar bemused expression as eerily mask-like as the jagged purple design Kankurou had decided on this morning. On Kankurou, the face-paint gave the impression of a sneering, supercilious laugh that told as little of his true feelings as Gaara's jade-green eyes ever had. On Gaara, the peculiar expression looked as if he'd just stepped in something foul and wasn't sure whether to kill whatever had left it there or pick it up and throw it at a random passer-by before hiding giggling in the nearest alley. 

Temari told herself that she really needed to stop cloud-watching with Shikamaru, if even three weeks after an afternoon with the Leaf chuunin she was still pulling interpretations out of the dusty air.

"Mail," Gaara said flatly, and skimmed a magazine across the kitchen table to Kankurou. Kankurou immediately dropped the puppet joint he'd been greasing and pounced on the glossy issue of _Shinobi World_; Temari caught a glimpse of a line advertising _Ten Ways to Tell if You Want to Kill Her or Kiss Her!_ and resolved to steal the magazine from Kankurou at the first opportunity.

"You got a letter, Temari," Gaara said. This time his aim wasn't quite so good; the letter nearly upset her cornflakes before she snatched it out of the air. It was postmarked from within Sunagakure, she saw with disappointment, tossing it back down to the table. It could wait till after breakfast.

"And bills for electricity, water, that building you leveled last week--" These sailed onto the table even more haphazardly than Temari's letter, landing in the fruit basket, Kankurou's glass of milk, and Temari's empty toast-plate. Kankurou pulled himself out of _Shinobi World_ just long enough to rescue the one that had fallen into his milk. "Hey," he started indignantly, then stopped.

Gaara was still holding a stack of letters thick and heavy enough to use for a _Kawarimi no Jutsu_. Most were in the usual dusty beige envelopes, but several were purple, at least three were pink, and one was as red as Gaara's tattoo. Temari wrinkled her nose. Was that perfume--?

"Fan mail," Gaara said. "I'm going up to my room." He disappeared in a whirl of sand; Temari put her hand protectively over her corn flakes and stared across the table at Kankurou.

Her brother shrugged. "Had to happen sometime." He tried to dive back into _Shinobi World_. Temari pulled it out of his hands.

"You realize," she said dangerously, "that our little brother is up there answering _fan mail_ at this very moment?"

"He's the Kazekage!" Kankurou protested. "Of course he's got fans--"

"Who send him letters in perfumed pink envelopes?"

Kankurou paused. "You think," he asked cautiously after a moment, "they're poisoned?"

"_Idiot_," Temari hissed. "I mean, he's got _fangirls_ now! Doesn't that, well--"

"Scare you?" Gaara asked politely from the door. Temari froze. Gaara stared curiously at her for a moment before he stepped to the kitchen sink and filled himself a glass of water.

"Chocolate?" he asked, holding out the large heart-shaped box. "Imported from Tea Country. The cherry cordials are good."

Temari supposed there might be some benefits to fangirls after all.


	15. Kunoichi Skills

**Title: **Kunoichi Skills  
**Rating: **G  
**Pairing: **Anko/Ibiki  
**Word Count: **567  
**Warnings: **none  
**Summary: **Anko _can _cook. Really.  
**Notes: **Written as a spectacularly belated Christmas present for Quin, who writes the best Anko with whom I've ever had the pleasure to play. It's set vaguely in the Scarlet Spiral frame; apologies (and thanks) to all whose characters I've borrowed (and distorted?). Murakami Sumire, by the way, is the sole property of Rini, but I made up the rivalry on my own.

* * *

"You mean, you actually can cook?" Ibiki regarded her with the mild bemusement of one who's turned a rock over and found not slimy wriggling bugs beneath, but a note promising a fortune and a kingdom to any man brave enough to rescue a beautiful princess from her evil uncle and his, oh, fifty-man complement of jounin-rank bodyguards. Not alarmed, exactly, nor even excited, just…wary.

Anko thought indignantly that he'd have believed her if she said she could fight her way bare-handed and naked through said fifty-man jounin squad. Why should cooking be so far beyond the range of possibility?

"Of course I can cook," she said, planting her hands on her hips and tipping her head to glare at him properly. "Why shouldn't I be able to? You think I'm good for killing and that's all, huh? You think--"

"I never said that," Ibiki said, with just a touch of haste in his voice. Anko heard that haste with satisfaction; it meant she'd managed to throw him off-kilter even more, and just the slightest degree was a victory worth relishing when you were dealing with Morino Ibiki, the only man who'd ever been able to observe her patented Streaking no Jutsu without passing out from bloodloss. (He'd claimed he hadn't even noticed. _Jerk._)

"Why're you surprised then?" she asked. "I'm a kunoichi, aren't I? How d'you think I managed to get through the Academy without learning to cook?"

"Sumire-san managed it," Ibiki pointed out.

Anko scowled. Sumire-san could manage a great many things, and none of them very good in Anko's opinion. And while nobody really seemed to care that Anko could kill people much quicker and more effectively than Sumire--which was really the only thing worth taking into consideration when you were weighing the relative merits of two ninja--Anko's ability to cook without blowing anything up ought to give her major points over Sumire, if you looked at things that way. Which a lot of men seemed to. Kurenai said this was because men thought mostly with their groins and their stomachs, and Suzume agreed but said it was the other way round, so either way Anko figured she had things at least on an even keel.

"I _can_ cook, anyway," she said, deciding not to bring up this issue right now. Ibiki probably wouldn't laugh at her, but he _would_ Look at her, and she wasn't going to let him distract her into an argument right now. She was trying to be nice, damn it, and if he wouldn't let her then she was going to have to pin him down and _make_ him let her.

She pried the lid off the bowl and waved it under his nose. "See? Katsudon, still hot. And--" She scrabbled in a pocket of her trench coat-- "chopsticks. Eat!"

"Anko," Ibiki said gently, "I'm a vegetarian."

Huh. Perhaps she should've checked about that before she wasted half the evening. Ah well, she still owed Hayate dinner, and if he wasn't around maybe she could stop by Kurenai's apartment and ask her about that knock-'em-comatose-jutsu…

Maybe he'd be impressed with _that_.


	16. Snapshots in a Photo Album

**Title: **Snapshots in a Photo Album  
**Rating: **PG  
**Pairings: **hints of AsuKure, if you squint…  
**Word Count**: 616  
**Warnings: **allusions to sex and alcohol  
**Notes: **Written as a birthday present for rurounigochan, who deserves much better. She asked for "a drabble about one of Kurenai's birthdays (at any point in time of her life you choose)." I'm not really happy with how it turned out--I think I wrote myself into a corner with the rigid structure, and I would have liked to include more birthdays and more people--but oh well.

* * *

It's nearly summer, and Kurenai's hands are sticky. 

There's ice cream on her kimono, and her father laughs while her mother fusses and scolts and tries to wipe away the strawberry smears. "Let her alone," her father says. "It's her party. You're only five once, you know?" He kisses his wife's hair, and then he picks Kurenai up and twirls her in the air, and she shrieks with delight. He kisses her sticky cheek when he sets her down.

She clings to his leg and tells him this is the best birthday ever.

-

It's nearly summer, and Kurenai's hands are sticky.

There's slime down her shirt, and the monster centipede is hanging from a branch over their heads, oozing slowly down. Kurenai wants to be sick, but Shinji is already in the bushes heaving his guts up, and Toboe is frantically trying to rinse the slime out of his hair with the water from his canteen, and neither of them is looking out for the other team of genin slowly creeping up on Shinji's left. There's just enough time for Kurenai to throw a genjutsu at their attackers and a shuriken at each of her boys, because things are _not_ going to end like this.

And dying in their first chuunin exam would really make this the worst birthday ever.

-

It's nearly summer, and Kurenai's hands are sticky.

There's blood leaking between her thighs, and her teammates are carefully not-quite-looking at her as they drag the bodies closer to the fire and begin to search them. Kurenai pushes herself to her knees and watches them play hero, now that her part is over, and she refuses to let herself shake. She's not weak. She's not scared, or ashamed, and she'd take this mission again if the Hokage asked her to--

She doesn't even remember the date that officially makes this the worst birthday ever.

-

It's nearly summer, and Kurenai's hands are sticky.

There's wine spreading in her lap, and she dabs at it ineffectually because the bottle is nearly gone and it's a shame to waste what is left. The movement catches the attention of the man on the barstool beside her, and he tries to help her get her wet skirt off. Except there's a hand on his shoulder, big and strong, and a trench-knife tickling his ear, and Kurenai barely has time to grab the bottle and flip her money on the bar before Asuma's escorting her out. "You're too drunk to mess around with," he warns her, and she laughs and leans against him and asks him to help her finish the bottle at home.

When she wakes in the morning with the hangover from hell and an empty bed, she'll barely even remember why this was the worst birthday ever.

-

It's nearly summer, and Kurenai's hands are sticky.

There's puppy drool down her front, and while she can't say she's ever been particularly fond of puppies, she gives the panting animal a weak smile and Kiba a stronger one. "This is, um, sweet of you, Kiba," she tells him. "But my apartment's a little too small for a puppy to be happy--do you think I could leave him at your house, and visit him?" The kid nods vigorously, grinning so wide it takes over his face, and then steps back and shoves Hinata, stammering, forward, to give her gift. Shino lurks behind them with a neatly wrapped package, and even he steps up as Kiba lunges forward again and draps himself over Kurenai's shoulder to watch her open Hinata's present.

It's not really what Kurenai remembers of a family, but it's still edging towards the best birthday ever.


	17. Arms and the Boy

**Title: **Arms and the Boy  
**Rating:** G  
**Pairing: **none  
**Word Count: **327  
**Summary: **Kakashi and Gai watch Gai's first genin team and ponder the meaning of age.  
**Note: **Written ages ago as a birthday present for Shroud, who asked for Kakashi and Gai with the keyword 'old'. Just recently found, revised, and titled; the title is of course a reference to Wilfred Owen's poem _Arms and the Boy, _which itself alludes to the first line of the _Aeneid. _I think Gai would rather like Virgil, but Kakashi would read Owen.

* * *

"Do they ever make you feel old?" Kakashi wonders, slouching against the bench and watching the kids running laps around the road below. Usually Gai would be down there with them--hell, he'd be leading them--but they're just back from a three-day mission that ended with Kakashi's left arm in a cast and Gai's right Achilles tendon carefully reconnected, and even Gai can behave himself when the medics yell loud enough. 

"The kids?" Gai's grown used to Kakashi's non sequiturs, over the years; he's so full of them himself that it takes no trouble to follow the broken thread of their conversation. "Of course not." He flashes that blinding grin he picked up sometime around their second year in ANBU, and adds, "If anything, their youthful energy is inspiring!"

Kakashi snorts softly, stretching his right arm out over the back of the bench and leaning his head back. For a moment he looks as if he's fallen asleep, or died. His chest rises and falls so slightly that the movement's nearly invisible, and the sheer fabric of his mask never flutters with his breath. But his voice isn't so low that Gai can't hear it. "They've got their whole lives ahead of them. And they don't know how short it's going to be."

"They'll live to be old as Sandaime-sama," Gai says firmly. "Only in body, of course. Their spirits shall remain as fresh and pure and youthful as they are today, and--" he prods Kakashi in the side with a blunt, calloused finger, "we're going to see them do it."

The pale-haired young man's mask crinkles in a tired smile. "You think _we're_ going to live that long?"

"That long, yes," Gai assures him. He doesn't need to say the rest: that the reason he believes so firmly in Youthful Spirits and Boundless Energy, the reason Kakashi drags himself from mission to mission like a dying man, is that in spirit, they're both already old.


	18. Five Bad Habits of Gekkou Hayate

**Title: **Five Bad Habits of Gekkou Hayate  
**Rating: **T  
**Pairing: **Gekkou Hayate/Uzuki Yuugao  
**Word Count: **746  
**Warning/s: **Canon pairing, with mentions of sex.  
**Summary: **Five things Yuugao wishes Hayate wouldn't do.  
**Notes: **This is a challenge/gift-fic, written for Nezuko, who plays the Hayate to my Yuugao at the marvelous RPG Revanche. She gave me, as a challenge, the summary listed above—and then proceeded to take my challenge and write a story that took my breath away. I can't hope to compare to its bittersweet beauty, so I've taken a more lighthearted approach to their romance—but I hope she, and you, like it anyway.

* * *

1. Yuugao admits, freely and without reservation, that she's a picky eater. There are quite a few things she won't even touch, much less nibble at; even at twenty, she still goes blank and very still at the mention of eggplant. Fish are bad enough, but shellfish are far worse; anything involving fungi might as well be poison. She doesn't _like _new things; she deals with enough unpleasant surprises in her life as an ANBU and a kunoichi of Konoha, and on the whole she thinks discovering that there're mushrooms in your dinner rates rather worse than discovering that your next mission has a survival rate of less than 50. That's still half a chance, after all, but the mushrooms are there to stay.

So she really, _really _wishes that Hayate would stop trying to sneak them in.

2. Being tidy is not a bad thing. Being compulsive about it might be, but as far as she knows there's nothing compulsive about color-coding one's clothing, or organizing books alphabetically by author and subject. It's efficient, really; there's no rushed searching for that kunai pouch you _thought _you left beneath the stack of clothes on the couch, or panicking because you didn't realize you were down to your last pair of underwear and don't have time to do laundry. Everything has a place, and everything is _in _its place.

Except when Hayate comes over, kicking his sandals off against the door, slinging his vest over the couch, tossing his shirt to the floor on his way to her bed. By that point she's usually too occupied with getting the rest of his clothes off to worry about where he disposes of hers, but every morning she takes great care to collect them all, fold them, and stack them neatly in the laundry bin.

He never seems to get the hint.

3. Her bathroom door doesn't have a lock. This is reasonable, as it's a sliding door and a one-woman apartment, but Yuugao has begun to think about installing one. She has nothing against Hayate seeing her naked when she intends him to--it is, after all, an obligatory and occasionally amusing prelude to rather more interesting things--but wandering in to watch one's lover shower is _not _sexy, no matter what Hayate says. He must be hanging around Kakashi-senpai a bit too much if he thinks her shampoo-filled wet hair is arousing, and she really wishes he'd stop.

Or at least stop asking if he can join her. (She never should have given in that time in Rain Country...)

4. He's very good about professional conduct, usually. When they're in uniform, they're ANBU; they're faceless and emotionless and quite possibly soulless, if you get into the metaphysics of it. He's the captain of squad four, and he's very good at it; Yuugao is quite certain his leadership is the biggest reason she and Shou and Ryouma have survived so long together on his team. Even in the briefing rooms at HQ, he conducts their briefings with a straight face and the serious, slight frown she's always wanted (but never dared) to kiss away.

Then he dismisses them, and as Shou and Ryouma head out, and she lingers to ask one more question, he gallantly ushers her ahead. And never fails to take the chance to steal a pinch.

Yuugao really wishes he'd find some other way to prove he's still faster than she.

5. She's far beyond lucky, she knows, to have him. He understands her as no one else has; he sees her as warrior and woman in a way no one else will, and he loves her both, with the mask and without. He's calm and gentle and caring; he's a brilliant swordsman, a fine squad captain, a dedicated shinobi. He loves her, and she can't help but marvel at it, wondering what he sees in her, what she can give him, why out of all the options who threw themselves at his feet he chose her, who asked only for kenjutsu lessons.

Sometimes, when his gods-blessed hands slip from rubbing the tense muscles of her back and shoulders to caress down her sides and lower, and when his casual conversation drops to tantalizing words whispered in her ear, she wishes he'd just give up the pretence and ask straight out. But the backrubs and the inevitable follow-through are both the best she's ever had, and she knows she's getting the better end of the deal.


	19. Meet the Family

**Title: **Meet the Family  
**Rating: **G  
**Pairing: **Kankurou/Hana, if you squint  
**Word Count: **639  
**Warning/s: **None  
**Summary: **Kankurou meets the Inuzuka and comes to conclusions about this saving-people-thing.  
**Notes: **This is _totally _the fault of Jules, who plays Gaara in Revanche RPG. We desperately need a good Kankurou, and we were talking about what a great guy he is, and, well… Kankurou/Hana resulted. I kinda like this pairing. XD;; (And if you're at all interested in Kankurou, check out my profile for links to Revanche!)

* * *

Kankurou let the dog-kid drag him home, shortly after the younger boy got out of the hospital. The late Kazekage's children were still not quite honored guests in Konoha, despite having saved the lives of three Konoha shinobi; the mission had still failed, after all, and Konoha was still under repair. Kankurou could pretend to ignore the suspicious glares and the muttering that followed him down the street, but that didn't mean he didn't notice them.

The dog-kid did, too, and he nearly snarled when some old woman pulled her little granddaughter out of their path. "C'mon," he said to Kankurou, shoving his hands in the pockets of his beaten-up old jacket. "S'not much further. My _family's_ gonna like you, any road."

Kankurou had his doubts about that, but he shrugged and hefted Karasu a little further up on his shoulder and followed the kid. Kiba'd invited him home for dinner, after all, and free Konoha cuisine wasn't something to turn up your nose at.

But when the kid finally stopped, it wasn't at the run-down shack Kankurou'd kind of been expecting, given the way the kid talked and dressed and acted. The gates were nearly half again as tall as he was, and they were so elaborately carved with images of running wolves and fighting dogs and romping puppies that he stood staring at them, trying to read the story they told, for a good thirty seconds after Kiba'd trotted through. It took the dog-kid's shout to bring him around again: "Yo, Kankurou! C'mere!"

He trailed inside. The gates opened onto a wide courtyard of packed dirt, ringed on three sides by a sprawling two-storey house with doors and archways leading into other courtyards. There were dogs everywhere, sprawled panting in the shadows the walls cast, wandering through doorways, napping under benches...

And lined up in a neat row facing him. A hulking black monster far too big to be called a dog sat at the side of a wild-haired woman around Baki's age, while three grey dogs of a more reasonable size surrounded the, uh, very trim legs of an, um, rather well-endowed young woman a few years older than Kankurou. She gave him a friendly smile, flashing very white, very sharp teeth. Kankurou decided that focusing on her smile was probably a good thing, if it kept him from slipping his gaze south. Not that dropping his eyes politely wasn't a _very_ tempting thought...

"Ma, nee-chan, this is Subaku no Kankurou," Kiba was saying cheerfully. "He's the guy who saved me'n Akamaru. He's a puppet-user, right, and he's got--"

"Kiba," his mother growled. The boy shut up immediately, though he kept the grin. Kankurou hoped Temari never learned that tone of voice.

"Kankurou, is it?" the Inuzuka woman asked, appraisingly. "Well, we owe you, for sure."

"Kiba's told us about you already," the kid's sister said, smiling again. "I'm Hana; this is our mother, Tsume. We're glad to meet you at last." She stepped forward, leaving her dogs milling in what Kankurou imagined was slight surprise.

Not _nearly_ as much surprise as she left him in when she leaned in to kiss his cheek, though. He'd never been more glad of the Kabuki paint that kept any hint of a blush from showing through.

"Just a mission," he muttered, tugging at Karasu's strap over his shoulder. Hana stepped away again, to his (even more surprising) acute disappointment. But not that far; she slung an arm over his shoulders, cheerfully tugging him forward towards her brother and her mother.

"Well, you can tell us about it over dinner, then. I'm sure your version'll be rather more truthful than Kiba's--"

"Nee-chan!" Kiba yelped in outrage, and their mother barked a laugh.

Kankurou found himself smiling as well.

Maybe this saving-people-thing wasn't such a drag after all.


End file.
